7 ms·

When hardware goes end-of-life, companies need to open-source the software

403 points by Marciplan 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
walterbell 9mo ago
Is there an RSS feed?
- Marciplan 9mo ago
  Hey, thank you! I've just added it https://www.marcia.no/rss.xml https://www.marcia.no/rss.xml (I'm only starting to write and forcing myself to write one article a day, so I'm afraid not every day will be worth your time)
herf 9mo ago
Most systems now "fail closed" because they are based on a code signing chain of trust that has no exceptions. It would be better if some portion of these systems were made to "fail open" - you don't want a botnet to take over in this situation but you should be able to delegate code signing duties to a new party when the original one goes under or stops supporting a device.
ktallett 9mo ago
This is where I hope EU do their magic
m463 9mo ago
I think bose did a wise thing with their speakers. Turns "company makes my purchase worthless" to "my purchase now has open source software". ...although it could be "no more product support, talk to random people on github" actually, don't know why there couldn't be legislative or tax support for these kinds of things.
- irjustin 9mo ago
  > tax support for these kinds of things What are you hoping for with tax support?
  - m463 9mo ago
    write-off product if open sourced, or make it charitable or ... nevermind, government rarely does this right.
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
  Bose didn't open source anything, the stories' titles were false.
wmf 9mo ago
Dumping responsibility on "the community" could backfire in a big way. It sounds good at small scale but it becomes a form of entitlement if the whole industry does it.
- wang_li 9mo ago
  It’s pointless anyway because there is always someone in the community who comes along and rips out support for old hardware. Because, you know, EOL, doesn’t matter that it’s a stationary target.
kogepathic 9mo ago
> What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it. This concept works fine for the author's example of a kitchen scale, but fails when the device in question is something like a router that has secure boot with one key burned into e-fuses. In that case we need both open software and a requirement that the manufacturer escrow signing keys with someone so that after EOL any software can be run.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  Forcing the release of signing keys would be a security disaster. The first person to grab the expired domain for the auto update server for a IoT device now gets a free botnet. The only real way to make devices securely re-usable with custom firmware requires some explicit steps and action to signal that the user wants to run 3rd-party firmware: A specific button press sequence is enough. You need to require the user to do something explicit to acknowledge that 3rd-party software is being installed, though. Forcing vendors to release their security mechanisms to the public and allow anyone to sign firmware as the company is not what you want, though.
  - Retr0id 9mo ago
    The OTA firmware update keys ideally shouldn't be the same as the secure boot keys.
    - jcgl 9mo ago
      …how do the updates get booted then?
      - bigfatkitten 9mo ago
        ROM bootloader loads a second stage bootloader (e.g. [1]). The ROM bootloader verifies that the second stage loader is signed with keys fused into the MCU. The second stage bootloader in turn verifies application images shipped by the vendor, using a different set of keys. When the vendor discontinues support for the device, they make available to their customers an optional update to the second stage bootloader that allows any application image to run, not just images signed by the vendor. This updated second stage loader is signed with the keypair fused into the MCU, and so it will run as per normal. They ideally make it so this update can only be installed with some sort of local interaction with the device, not automatically over the air. Devices in the field running ordinary OEM firmware continue to be protected from malicious OTA updates. Customers who wish to unlock their devices also have the means to do so. This is very technically straightforward to implement, but it needs to be considered when the device is designed. Regulations would be required to make sure that happens. [1] https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mcuboot/ https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mcuboot/
Aurornis 9mo ago
> Now, I'm not asking companies to open-source their entire codebase. That's unrealistic when an app is tied to a larger platform. What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it. The actual proposal in this blog doesn’t make much sense. Having the specs of a device isn’t going to change much because they can be determined by anyone examining the PCB. Most devices don’t have a simple connection protocol, like the Spotify Car Thing used as an example.
- palata 9mo ago
  I understand the idea as "provide what is necessary for someone to reuse the hardware". Just the bare minimum, like how to flash a firmware and a minimal firmware. Now for many products, nobody would spend the time needed to make it actually work, but for some it may be nice. But I agree that it is more complicated than it seems, and realistically that would be on a case by case basis.
  - buildbot 9mo ago
    Honestly between the ability to flash firmware, interface specs, and maybe PCB schematics that should be enough to use an old device for a motivated individual. My personal pet example of this is old cameras, lenses, and digital backs. Plenty of great hardware out there that currently requires very extensive reverse engineering to use that would be made a lot easier with firmware & schematics.
gregsadetsky 9mo ago
One great example/case for this would be Aura Frames (recommended to me by a few folks here when I posted an Ask HN) [0] If the company disappears... what happens to the devices and the cloud storage? I've been really enjoying the product (it's really well done, the mobile app works perfectly well) but it's a scary thought. I also found this Reddit thread [1] with some language from the company supposedly saying they would do their best to launch alternative tooling if they disappeared, but I can't find this language anywhere else online. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781 [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/what_if_the_aura_photo_frames_company_goes_out_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/wha...
- baaron 9mo ago
  I have had an itch to disect an Aura frame and do something akin to the Tonie Box jailbreak. But I am too afraid of being responsible for bricking our frame and I can't justify spending the money on one just for R&D.
  - gregsadetsky 9mo ago
    If you’re confident that you can reverse it, happy to throw $50 at this. It would be extremely great if you did this. Anybody else want to crowdfund? :) P.s. if you end up absolutely bricking it, but at least get one great blog post out of it, it’s still worth it ha
- hattmall 9mo ago
  Probably be the same as the email addresses for the Kodak Pulse Frame, or Sony Dash, both really awesome products that the manufacturer just killed the backend services and bricked them to an extent.
lacker 9mo ago
In my experience, whenever you mandate open source software, you get software so unusable that it might as well be closed-source. Like, it doesn't compile, and they ignore all bug reports.
- burnt-resistor 9mo ago
  That's a chicken-little, FUD argument because if it were required by law, then everyone would have to do it and be held to the same standard.
  - fithisux 9mo ago
    True
tonyhart7 9mo ago
if EOL hardware become open source and community can support it then community would extend that EOL product and making it extensively harder for older customer to buy new product I love to see this future but knowing this, company would never do this
palata 9mo ago
I totally agree with the frustration of having hardware I would like to keep using but can't because it got EOL. Like a smart speaker or something. But I don't know if there is a pragmatic way to approach that. I mean, I could also say "it should be illegal to produce e-waste", but what does that mean and how do we actually do it?
- cogman10 9mo ago
  If you aren't looking at capturing 100% ewaste, then simple laws around liability and penalties for reduced functionality is all you'd need. Simple things like "if an electronic device, through no fault of the owner, can no longer perform it's main function, then the owner is due a full refund. A company may escape the refund by placing all software required to run the product in the public domain." It'd miss cases like fly by night companies, but you could catch big players like google disabling their thermostats for non-hardware reasons.
  - fermuch 9mo ago
    The only thing you'd achieve doing that is to change the "main function" of a device to somethings silly, like a thermostat being sold as an art decor with the optional additional of functioning as a thermostat too.
    - evil-olive 9mo ago
      > change the "main function" of a device to somethings silly, like a thermostat being sold as an art decor that seems like it can be addressed by making sure that the regulators who enforce these laws have more object permanence than a 6 month old baby. like, if I try to sell a "metal sculpture" that by sheer coincidence is capable of firing 9mm ammunition, I'm going to have the ATF knocking on my door real quick, and they're not going to be fooled by me claiming "no that's art"
      - BobbyTables2 9mo ago
        Probably much easier when the seller is in China and selling the product in the US on Amazon. Why would the ATF go after them instead of YOU?
Retr0id 9mo ago
> And here's the thing: with vibe-coding making development more accessible than ever, this isn't just for hardcore developers anymore. Regular users can actually tinker with this stuff now. Have you tried pointing an LLM agent at a decompiled apk? It could probably write you protocol docs for it.
- teo_zero 9mo ago
  True, but most probably you wouldn't be legally allowed to redistribute your driver or software.
natas 9mo ago
"EOL hardware should mean open-source software" It is if you buy carefully: I don't buy hardware that can't be used with linux or whatever I deem necessary. And then, there's the car...
ellisd 9mo ago
Dear EU Santa, please force Meta to open source the Facebook Portal as well so I can repurpose relatively decent hardware for something useful and fun, rather than e-waste.
protocolture 9mo ago
I actually think this is a great idea. Not even for "Open Source". Can you imagine if UBNT had to open source its EOL boot chain, so that Cambium was legally entitled to roll its firmware for old Unifi kit? And Vice Versa? The result might not be "Old hardware supported by the community" the result might be "Eternal product updates so we can legally prevent Cambium from taking our customers"
- bigfatkitten 9mo ago
  Open source isn’t going to happen on any real scale, because pretty much any non-trivial commercial product is going to have a ton of third party IP that the manufacturer has no right to give you. What manufacturers should be required to do, at a minimum, is remove any impediment to you running whatever alternative software you choose.
  - protocolture 9mo ago
    Yeah precisely.
- SchemaLoad 9mo ago
  It's the bare minimum but not good enough imo. If your smart home products rely on an external server which no longer exists, the average person will never install a 3rd party firmware and self host the servers. They will just throw it in the bin. Ideally we should just be designing products so they don't have external dependencies. A smart speaker should be able to stream over the local network on a standard protocol which doesn't rely on an external server existing. A lightbulb should be able to be paired using a generic standard without running through the OEMs servers. Thankfully for some devices this does seem to be the trend. Matter over Thread smart devices are not dependent on proprietary hubs, apps, or external servers.
  - protocolture 9mo ago
    >the average person will never install a 3rd party firmware Heres a kicker. I really dont care about the average person. I care about multimillion dollar stacks of hardware that have support rug pulled on them, leaving millions of customers stuck. I care about small businesses that invest in their communities and find themselves locked into a single vendor without the cost to overhaul their network to move to another one. Throw your Dlink home router in the bin every 3 years. I literally dont care. >Ideally we should just be designing products so they don't have external dependencies. This is good too. But even then, I would apply this logic to stuff like Meraki, where major features go away if you dont buy the license. Lightbulbs are beneath my notice/contempt.
robomartin 9mo ago
Nice concept, yet, this isn't realistic but for a few special cases. In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature. This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property. Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.
chasil 9mo ago
Phones that don't get updates for 12 months also should be required to unlock their bootloaders, so a 3rd party ROM can be installed, or at least Magisk can be loaded. Mediatek devices are beyond hope, but some could be saved this way that are otherwise trash.
- userbinator 9mo ago
  Mediatek has always been more open than others -- the bootloader wasn't even locked on most generic Androids, and SPFlashTool easily gets around it. For the newer devices, there's MTKClient: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Mtkclient https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Mtkclient
- fsflover 9mo ago
  This is why I chose a phone that can run mainline GNU/Linux by design, with lifetime updates.
seemaze 9mo ago
I disagree. The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased. The economics of leasing vs buying are well understood by the general public. Allow them to make an honest decision at the time of purchase.
- jen20 9mo ago
  > The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased. This isn't even the case: generally leased things have to work for some defined period of time ("the least period"). I also think a distinction should be drawn between things bricked because they require a server connection, vs devices bricked because the rightful owner has chosen to do so because they have been stolen.
drpixie 9mo ago
How about requiring all APIs to be open? Companies are free to run/maintain/drop servers and apps, but we'd have the ability to use the hardware we bought, if we write our own apps. That might actually be good for security. If APIs must be public, proper cloud security becomes necessary (rather than relying on obscurity).
wilg 9mo ago
I think you should be allowed to stop supporting a hardware device without open sourcing the software, full stop. I just think that's the least bad option. I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.
drnick1 9mo ago
Instead of trying to regulate everything, perhaps it would be better if consumers educated themselves and did not buy devices that do not run locally using open protocols in the first place. For me, it's a hard requirement -- I will not buy a "smart" anything device that isn't supported offline by Home Assistant. This restricts my choice set, but so be it. Sometimes, it means doing more work. I won't buy a Ring camera, so I had to build my own system using generic RTSP cameras, some hard drives and a PC.
- goku12 9mo ago
  I'm pleasantly surprised to see this opinion gain popularity on HN. When I raise the same point, someone usually replies with a cynical and sometimes snarky dismissal. I just wrote a long rant about it [1] in support of somebody else who made the same point. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46612531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46612531
JimDabell 9mo ago
A huge feature of copyright is that it is time-limited. When the copyright period expires, it passes into the public domain and belongs to everybody. There are two major things that undermine this for software: copyright durations, and lack of source code. Software copyright durations should be at most a few years, and to be eligible for copyright, software should have its source code published or at minimum held in escrow, so that when the copyright expires it is still useful. We already require patents to be published in exchange for the protection we give them; software copyright needs to be the same.
- galangalalgol 9mo ago
  Llms are getting quite good at decompiling things to idiomatic code. How much better do they have to get before open source is a moot point?
  - IgorPartola 9mo ago
    Open source is as much about the source as it is about the license. Having a source you don’t have the rights to is not worth much.
    - galangalalgol 9mo ago
      That is kind of my point. Open or closed, it is only the license that matters.
vivzkestrel 9mo ago
- my opinion is going to sound very controversial here - this also extends to software - when it has been 25 yrs since a game has released, you are no longer making money from your game big time - companies should be forced to open source their games at this point in time - so that we can revive games that companies like ubisoft keep shutting down and removing from steam libraries completely
- realusername 9mo ago
  We can indeed see the benefit of releasing game source code with the old Mario and GTA recompilations.
- bruce511 9mo ago
  This might be true for games, but its not universally true for software. Clearly the Windows NT kernel is older than 25 years, and is still making money. And it's not alone. My own company is still actively developing and selling a program first released in 1998. Even if we wanted to Open Source every build 25 years after it's release, it might be difficult to figure out how to store the code that long. We originally backed up on tape. Good luck restoring that now. Then writable CDs; those have likely degraded (and we'd need to find an old CD Drive to read them.) Even most hard drives of the era are no longer usable - MFM, SCSI ,ATA none of those interfaces exist, and drives were tiny. If you had to choose a media today, that you'd be confident would work in 25 years, what would you pick? Sure, our active code survives because we simply clone the archive every time we replace the server, but we don't have a history if every build ever. Seems like a million years ago I wrote some games. The source code is long gone. (Well it's on 5.25 floppy disks in my garage for 30 years, so functionally gone.) The compiler to make it is long gone. The OS and physical hardware is long gone (although emulators exist. ). I'm sorry to say, but making laws for old software is basically pointless.
  - snvzz 9mo ago
    >Clearly the Windows NT kernel is older than 25 years, and is still making money. Not the one from 25 years ago. >Seems like a million years ago I wrote some games. The source code is long gone. (Well it's on 5.25 floppy disks in my garage for 30 years, so functionally gone.) Legal requirement would have ensured great care in preservation of said source. >I'm sorry to say, but making laws for old software is basically pointless. If it's pointless, then copyright should expire much earlier.
abetusk 9mo ago
Do you know what the single, most effective way to ensure end-of-life projects open sources the software and hardware? It's if it's *open source*. Not assurances that if they meet their funding goal they'll open source. Not a pinky promise to open source in the future. Not magnanimous decision by upper management to open source if the business fails. It's open sourcing from the outset so that people who invest in their technology can be assured they've fulfilled their promise to the community. Pay for products that produce open source software and hardware. Pay artists that put out libre/free work. Demand projects that ask for money and "will open source in the future" open source now before taking your money. In my view, finger wagging at corporate entities not open sourcing their products after end-of-life amounts to posturing.
- CivBase 9mo ago
  In most cases the market rewards closed source. You can't reasonably expect that to change by pressuring consumers. We need regulation here.
  - abetusk 9mo ago
    I don't claim there's any easy answer. To your point, market rewards are complex and doesn't always reward closed source. I would say the markets can reward companies that add value, and companies can add value by servicing a demand at reduced costs. One cost reduction measure is to use FOSS. For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux as the underlying operating system over MS Windows. I partially agree that pressuring consumers has issues, but the consumers we're talking about in this context are programmers, software developers, electrical engineers and other technically minded folk. Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy. I'm open to regulation but it's a coarse tool that favors large corporations. In my opinion, one way to larger regulation is to start small, show value from a growing community adoption and then try to push bigger. Linux was a toy operating system until it wasn't. One minor point on regulation: From what I understand, there are some stipulations for (US) government grants to ensure FOSS artifacts get produced. I think violations of these conditions is common place. So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.
0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
One time I worked at a non-SV megacorp and they estimated the cost of open sourcing one project. It would've taken between 2 and 6 months and cost mid-six figures. Even if they wanted to pay for this when the product is about to be abandoned, they literally can't if they licensed some non-free IP.
- fithisux 9mo ago
  They should do it from the start.
  - 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
    Why?
    - fithisux 9mo ago
      They should design from the beginning to be as open source as possible. I work for a known customer and for their analytics stack they used in one of their departments they use some non-free libraries. From the first month I asked them to research open source libraries to have as a fallback and make the source code as friendly as possible to other contributors as if tomorrow we would open source it. The idea is that if we disappear people should take over easily. If the non-free vendor disappear or we do not have the money to spend we need a fallback. They listened to the second part, but not the first. During summer I had to build around this non-free libraries but their subscription ended when people responsible were in vacations and the project was paused because of design bugs for two months, so they did not plan to renew the license for two months. Still my part had to carry on in the mean time. I added an open source library as a fallback, even if it was 4x slower. Because of delays the license was renewed 3 months later when design issues were addressed. If they had designed around open source from the start I would have a better time. It was a real pain to replicate the functionality around the open source library. It was not a drop-in, not very far but far enough to cause hard to find bugs, in nasty calculational code. That had a number of bugs already and bad code quality. My experience.
shmerl 9mo ago
More like drivers should be open source to begin with.
- skewbone 9mo ago
  This would be fantastic. I'm trying to write an audio driver for my HT|Omega eClaro PCIe soundcard for Linux by leveraging kernel modules for cards with a similar BOM. It is mostly working, but the main hurdle is the inability to increase the volume to >= 50% of the volume in Windows. I'm setting attenuation correctly to the correct DAC registers and I can hear the opamp relay click on, but can't adjust the final gain. It sure would be great to have the Windows driver source. Worse yet, the company is unresponsive to my requests for any info (schematics, gain setting sequence, anything).
  - userbinator 9mo ago
    Run Windows driver in a VM and pass-through your device, then dump the registers and compare.
    - skewbone 9mo ago
      Thanks, that's a great suggestion. Looks like I can also use QEMU to also trace MMIO. I appreciate the advice!
j16sdiz 9mo ago
with most of the electric are just oem stuff from china, how are you going to enforce it?
userbinator 9mo ago
but because the app is no longer in development, it's essentially useless the app used to store data for up to 5 users to keep track over time. I miss that! What? Was it storing the data on a cloud server? In that case it's a different story, but a local app should continue working essentially indefinitely. All this focus on source code is IMHO missing the point. RMS also missed this point when he started the GNU project. Source code is neither necessary nor sufficient for (legal) freedom. They just need to relinquish the copyright and release any keys and such getting in the way. Lots of examples otherwise --- I'll refer you to the cracking scene, game modding, etc. In the physical world, products can be "EOL" for decades and the aftermarket will fill in the void if there is demand, often even when the original product is still in production. The original manufacturer never released blueprints and other comparable-to-source-code information; they just don't try to stop the aftermarket. Mid-century cars are a great example of this. tl;dr: stop demanding source code, start demanding freedom.
burnt-resistor 9mo ago
Vintage hw is even harder to find drivers, BIOSs, SDKs, schematics, manuals, and such for because there's no assurance of proper archival. This is almost always seen whenever downloads were hidden behind Flash, CGI, JS, or other dynamic / link-rotten URI or were on an ftp server which IA failed to mirror. There must be international legal minimum standards of post-sales support and EOL archival caretaking to really reduce e-waste and allow things people paid for to endure rather than forced planned obsolescence like cloud-side or update-based bricking. The corrosive consumer mindset of "new, new, new"; fragile, undocumented, closed-source, short-life tech; and throwing away expensive things is absurd.
teo_zero 9mo ago
Since the article is about open-sourcing the interface and not the software itself, why only when the product goes end of life? Also, "end of life" is hard to define. Does it mean not being produced, ordered or sold? After how many days, months, etc.?
- mc3301 9mo ago
  I guess it depends? -Software updates no longer available -Customer support no longer exists -End of legal (or voluntary) obligations to stock replacement parts and offer repair services for the hardware
fithisux 9mo ago
Should be a law. But also sell hardware with extensive documentation and if possible conform to a standard. Moreover if the hardware is composite, that should apply to its components.
renewiltord 9mo ago
Browsed OP's website. Zero open-source content. Browsed top commenters' site. Only outlier is abetusk here who has his hobbyist stuff available openly, but nothing professional. I don't get it. Why don't any of you guys do the thing you want others to do? Be the change you want to see in the world.
PeterStuer 9mo ago
The article calls for releasing and unlocking the api to the device, not for releasing all it's code as OS as the title seemd to suggest. This is more achievable as code itself is often shared across multiple devices, some not EOL, and often not even owned by the HW producer but licensed under non FOSS compatible terms.
torginus 9mo ago
I think we are in a middle of a dark age. I was just playing around with home automation, and I have built quite a few custom devices over the past few months. Just to illustrate what I mean: I have an old furnace - it's interface is literally: pull this pin down to ground and the furnace starts up. It's incredibly easy to work with. Later furnaces from this manufacturer have some proprietary protocol that seems very difficult to interface with, from what I gathered from the internet. But, even yet more modern versions support the standardized OpenTherm protocol and is very hackable again. Something else: Hardware tends to be amortized away into a commodity. A ton of modern devices essentially run on ESP32s, raspberry Pis (or some other open SoC) or smartphone hardware with Android. I (and others have) just started hacking around with an ESP32-S3 based HMI - it's and LCD screen married to and ESP32-S3, integrated into a very nice case with a small touch screen panel. I was able to whip up a custom professional looking GUI in a couple weekends and integrate it into my (fully local, open source, HA-based) home automation system. It runs ESPHome and uses LVGL to draw the UI. I've had friends over and they remarked about how nice it looked, and asked about the brand and were suprised when I told them I hacked it together. It looks good enough that you could sell it and works very well.
developer786 9mo ago
A classic example of this is the Google Nest Learning Thermostats Version 1 and 2. With a decent bounty, these £220 ($400+) devices have been given a new lease of life by the team behind: https://nolongerevil.com/ https://nolongerevil.com/ Repurposing bricked Nest Gen 1 & 2 thermostats with custom software. Giving old hardware new life through open source innovation. No Longer Evil is a right-to-repair firmware and cloud replacement for Nest Thermostats that frees your device from Google’s cloud dependency. By flashing custom firmware, your thermostat will operate independently and connect to No Longer Evil’s platform (or your own self-hosted server), giving you complete control over your device data and settings.
bsaul 9mo ago
funny how ideas are in the air. I had the exact same idea of having EU enforce that just 2 weeks ago.
BrtByte 9mo ago
Nobody expects lifetime support, but killing basic functionality because an app backend or roadmap disappeared is hard to justify, especially when the device still works electrically and mechanically
danr4 9mo ago
it won't happen. thankfully AI + Android makes it easy to reverse engineer protocols. APKs are hilariously informative. I'm working on my own app+server for the Limitless pendant i bought before the meta acquisition. didn't write a single line of code.
kakwa_ 9mo ago
That's not enough by a long shot. There are already plenty of devices, from old phones to vacuum robots, where we have that or near enough. Technically, we know how we could maintain/re-flash these devices. Yet, we don't. Why? lack of standardization, specially the boot process in non-x86 platforms. Having to maintain per device images is not really practical at scale.

403 points by Marciplan 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

walterbell 9mo ago

Is there an RSS feed?

Marciplan 9mo ago
Hey, thank you! I've just added it https://www.marcia.no/rss.xml https://www.marcia.no/rss.xml (I'm only starting to write and forcing myself to write one article a day, so I'm afraid not every day will be worth your time)

herf 9mo ago

Most systems now "fail closed" because they are based on a code signing chain of trust that has no exceptions. It would be better if some portion of these systems were made to "fail open" - you don't want a botnet to take over in this situation but you should be able to delegate code signing duties to a new party when the original one goes under or stops supporting a device.

ktallett 9mo ago

This is where I hope EU do their magic

m463 9mo ago

I think bose did a wise thing with their speakers. Turns "company makes my purchase worthless" to "my purchase now has open source software". ...although it could be "no more product support, talk to random people on github" actually, don't know why there couldn't be legislative or tax support for these kinds of things.

irjustin 9mo ago
> tax support for these kinds of things What are you hoping for with tax support?
- m463 9mo ago
  write-off product if open sourced, or make it charitable or ... nevermind, government rarely does this right.
0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
Bose didn't open source anything, the stories' titles were false.

wmf 9mo ago

Dumping responsibility on "the community" could backfire in a big way. It sounds good at small scale but it becomes a form of entitlement if the whole industry does it.

wang_li 9mo ago
It’s pointless anyway because there is always someone in the community who comes along and rips out support for old hardware. Because, you know, EOL, doesn’t matter that it’s a stationary target.

kogepathic 9mo ago

> What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it. This concept works fine for the author's example of a kitchen scale, but fails when the device in question is something like a router that has secure boot with one key burned into e-fuses. In that case we need both open software and a requirement that the manufacturer escrow signing keys with someone so that after EOL any software can be run.

Aurornis 9mo ago
Forcing the release of signing keys would be a security disaster. The first person to grab the expired domain for the auto update server for a IoT device now gets a free botnet. The only real way to make devices securely re-usable with custom firmware requires some explicit steps and action to signal that the user wants to run 3rd-party firmware: A specific button press sequence is enough. You need to require the user to do something explicit to acknowledge that 3rd-party software is being installed, though. Forcing vendors to release their security mechanisms to the public and allow anyone to sign firmware as the company is not what you want, though.
- Retr0id 9mo ago
  The OTA firmware update keys ideally shouldn't be the same as the secure boot keys.
  - jcgl 9mo ago
    …how do the updates get booted then?
    - bigfatkitten 9mo ago
      ROM bootloader loads a second stage bootloader (e.g. [1]). The ROM bootloader verifies that the second stage loader is signed with keys fused into the MCU. The second stage bootloader in turn verifies application images shipped by the vendor, using a different set of keys. When the vendor discontinues support for the device, they make available to their customers an optional update to the second stage bootloader that allows any application image to run, not just images signed by the vendor. This updated second stage loader is signed with the keypair fused into the MCU, and so it will run as per normal. They ideally make it so this update can only be installed with some sort of local interaction with the device, not automatically over the air. Devices in the field running ordinary OEM firmware continue to be protected from malicious OTA updates. Customers who wish to unlock their devices also have the means to do so. This is very technically straightforward to implement, but it needs to be considered when the device is designed. Regulations would be required to make sure that happens. [1] https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mcuboot/ https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/mcuboot/

Aurornis 9mo ago

> Now, I'm not asking companies to open-source their entire codebase. That's unrealistic when an app is tied to a larger platform. What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it. The actual proposal in this blog doesn’t make much sense. Having the specs of a device isn’t going to change much because they can be determined by anyone examining the PCB. Most devices don’t have a simple connection protocol, like the Spotify Car Thing used as an example.

palata 9mo ago
I understand the idea as "provide what is necessary for someone to reuse the hardware". Just the bare minimum, like how to flash a firmware and a minimal firmware. Now for many products, nobody would spend the time needed to make it actually work, but for some it may be nice. But I agree that it is more complicated than it seems, and realistically that would be on a case by case basis.
- buildbot 9mo ago
  Honestly between the ability to flash firmware, interface specs, and maybe PCB schematics that should be enough to use an old device for a motivated individual. My personal pet example of this is old cameras, lenses, and digital backs. Plenty of great hardware out there that currently requires very extensive reverse engineering to use that would be made a lot easier with firmware & schematics.

gregsadetsky 9mo ago

One great example/case for this would be Aura Frames (recommended to me by a few folks here when I posted an Ask HN) [0] If the company disappears... what happens to the devices and the cloud storage? I've been really enjoying the product (it's really well done, the mobile app works perfectly well) but it's a scary thought. I also found this Reddit thread [1] with some language from the company supposedly saying they would do their best to launch alternative tooling if they disappeared, but I can't find this language anywhere else online. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781 [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/what_if_the_aura_photo_frames_company_goes_out_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/wha...

baaron 9mo ago
I have had an itch to disect an Aura frame and do something akin to the Tonie Box jailbreak. But I am too afraid of being responsible for bricking our frame and I can't justify spending the money on one just for R&D.
- gregsadetsky 9mo ago
  If you’re confident that you can reverse it, happy to throw $50 at this. It would be extremely great if you did this. Anybody else want to crowdfund? :) P.s. if you end up absolutely bricking it, but at least get one great blog post out of it, it’s still worth it ha
hattmall 9mo ago
Probably be the same as the email addresses for the Kodak Pulse Frame, or Sony Dash, both really awesome products that the manufacturer just killed the backend services and bricked them to an extent.

lacker 9mo ago

In my experience, whenever you mandate open source software, you get software so unusable that it might as well be closed-source. Like, it doesn't compile, and they ignore all bug reports.

burnt-resistor 9mo ago
That's a chicken-little, FUD argument because if it were required by law, then everyone would have to do it and be held to the same standard.
- fithisux 9mo ago
  True

tonyhart7 9mo ago

if EOL hardware become open source and community can support it then community would extend that EOL product and making it extensively harder for older customer to buy new product I love to see this future but knowing this, company would never do this

palata 9mo ago

I totally agree with the frustration of having hardware I would like to keep using but can't because it got EOL. Like a smart speaker or something. But I don't know if there is a pragmatic way to approach that. I mean, I could also say "it should be illegal to produce e-waste", but what does that mean and how do we actually do it?

cogman10 9mo ago
If you aren't looking at capturing 100% ewaste, then simple laws around liability and penalties for reduced functionality is all you'd need. Simple things like "if an electronic device, through no fault of the owner, can no longer perform it's main function, then the owner is due a full refund. A company may escape the refund by placing all software required to run the product in the public domain." It'd miss cases like fly by night companies, but you could catch big players like google disabling their thermostats for non-hardware reasons.
- fermuch 9mo ago
  The only thing you'd achieve doing that is to change the "main function" of a device to somethings silly, like a thermostat being sold as an art decor with the optional additional of functioning as a thermostat too.
  - evil-olive 9mo ago
    > change the "main function" of a device to somethings silly, like a thermostat being sold as an art decor that seems like it can be addressed by making sure that the regulators who enforce these laws have more object permanence than a 6 month old baby. like, if I try to sell a "metal sculpture" that by sheer coincidence is capable of firing 9mm ammunition, I'm going to have the ATF knocking on my door real quick, and they're not going to be fooled by me claiming "no that's art"
    - BobbyTables2 9mo ago
      Probably much easier when the seller is in China and selling the product in the US on Amazon. Why would the ATF go after them instead of YOU?

Retr0id 9mo ago

> And here's the thing: with vibe-coding making development more accessible than ever, this isn't just for hardcore developers anymore. Regular users can actually tinker with this stuff now. Have you tried pointing an LLM agent at a decompiled apk? It could probably write you protocol docs for it.

teo_zero 9mo ago
True, but most probably you wouldn't be legally allowed to redistribute your driver or software.

natas 9mo ago

"EOL hardware should mean open-source software" It is if you buy carefully: I don't buy hardware that can't be used with linux or whatever I deem necessary. And then, there's the car...

ellisd 9mo ago

Dear EU Santa, please force Meta to open source the Facebook Portal as well so I can repurpose relatively decent hardware for something useful and fun, rather than e-waste.

protocolture 9mo ago

I actually think this is a great idea. Not even for "Open Source". Can you imagine if UBNT had to open source its EOL boot chain, so that Cambium was legally entitled to roll its firmware for old Unifi kit? And Vice Versa? The result might not be "Old hardware supported by the community" the result might be "Eternal product updates so we can legally prevent Cambium from taking our customers"

bigfatkitten 9mo ago
Open source isn’t going to happen on any real scale, because pretty much any non-trivial commercial product is going to have a ton of third party IP that the manufacturer has no right to give you. What manufacturers should be required to do, at a minimum, is remove any impediment to you running whatever alternative software you choose.
- protocolture 9mo ago
  Yeah precisely.
SchemaLoad 9mo ago
It's the bare minimum but not good enough imo. If your smart home products rely on an external server which no longer exists, the average person will never install a 3rd party firmware and self host the servers. They will just throw it in the bin. Ideally we should just be designing products so they don't have external dependencies. A smart speaker should be able to stream over the local network on a standard protocol which doesn't rely on an external server existing. A lightbulb should be able to be paired using a generic standard without running through the OEMs servers. Thankfully for some devices this does seem to be the trend. Matter over Thread smart devices are not dependent on proprietary hubs, apps, or external servers.
- protocolture 9mo ago
  >the average person will never install a 3rd party firmware Heres a kicker. I really dont care about the average person. I care about multimillion dollar stacks of hardware that have support rug pulled on them, leaving millions of customers stuck. I care about small businesses that invest in their communities and find themselves locked into a single vendor without the cost to overhaul their network to move to another one. Throw your Dlink home router in the bin every 3 years. I literally dont care. >Ideally we should just be designing products so they don't have external dependencies. This is good too. But even then, I would apply this logic to stuff like Meraki, where major features go away if you dont buy the license. Lightbulbs are beneath my notice/contempt.

robomartin 9mo ago

Nice concept, yet, this isn't realistic but for a few special cases. In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature. This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property. Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.

chasil 9mo ago

Phones that don't get updates for 12 months also should be required to unlock their bootloaders, so a 3rd party ROM can be installed, or at least Magisk can be loaded. Mediatek devices are beyond hope, but some could be saved this way that are otherwise trash.

userbinator 9mo ago
Mediatek has always been more open than others -- the bootloader wasn't even locked on most generic Androids, and SPFlashTool easily gets around it. For the newer devices, there's MTKClient: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Mtkclient https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Mtkclient
fsflover 9mo ago
This is why I chose a phone that can run mainline GNU/Linux by design, with lifetime updates.

seemaze 9mo ago

I disagree. The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased. The economics of leasing vs buying are well understood by the general public. Allow them to make an honest decision at the time of purchase.

jen20 9mo ago
> The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased. This isn't even the case: generally leased things have to work for some defined period of time ("the least period"). I also think a distinction should be drawn between things bricked because they require a server connection, vs devices bricked because the rightful owner has chosen to do so because they have been stolen.

drpixie 9mo ago

How about requiring all APIs to be open? Companies are free to run/maintain/drop servers and apps, but we'd have the ability to use the hardware we bought, if we write our own apps. That might actually be good for security. If APIs must be public, proper cloud security becomes necessary (rather than relying on obscurity).

wilg 9mo ago

I think you should be allowed to stop supporting a hardware device without open sourcing the software, full stop. I just think that's the least bad option. I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.

drnick1 9mo ago

Instead of trying to regulate everything, perhaps it would be better if consumers educated themselves and did not buy devices that do not run locally using open protocols in the first place. For me, it's a hard requirement -- I will not buy a "smart" anything device that isn't supported offline by Home Assistant. This restricts my choice set, but so be it. Sometimes, it means doing more work. I won't buy a Ring camera, so I had to build my own system using generic RTSP cameras, some hard drives and a PC.

goku12 9mo ago
I'm pleasantly surprised to see this opinion gain popularity on HN. When I raise the same point, someone usually replies with a cynical and sometimes snarky dismissal. I just wrote a long rant about it [1] in support of somebody else who made the same point. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46612531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46612531

JimDabell 9mo ago

A huge feature of copyright is that it is time-limited. When the copyright period expires, it passes into the public domain and belongs to everybody. There are two major things that undermine this for software: copyright durations, and lack of source code. Software copyright durations should be at most a few years, and to be eligible for copyright, software should have its source code published or at minimum held in escrow, so that when the copyright expires it is still useful. We already require patents to be published in exchange for the protection we give them; software copyright needs to be the same.

galangalalgol 9mo ago
Llms are getting quite good at decompiling things to idiomatic code. How much better do they have to get before open source is a moot point?
- IgorPartola 9mo ago
  Open source is as much about the source as it is about the license. Having a source you don’t have the rights to is not worth much.
  - galangalalgol 9mo ago
    That is kind of my point. Open or closed, it is only the license that matters.

vivzkestrel 9mo ago

- my opinion is going to sound very controversial here - this also extends to software - when it has been 25 yrs since a game has released, you are no longer making money from your game big time - companies should be forced to open source their games at this point in time - so that we can revive games that companies like ubisoft keep shutting down and removing from steam libraries completely

realusername 9mo ago
We can indeed see the benefit of releasing game source code with the old Mario and GTA recompilations.
bruce511 9mo ago
This might be true for games, but its not universally true for software. Clearly the Windows NT kernel is older than 25 years, and is still making money. And it's not alone. My own company is still actively developing and selling a program first released in 1998. Even if we wanted to Open Source every build 25 years after it's release, it might be difficult to figure out how to store the code that long. We originally backed up on tape. Good luck restoring that now. Then writable CDs; those have likely degraded (and we'd need to find an old CD Drive to read them.) Even most hard drives of the era are no longer usable - MFM, SCSI ,ATA none of those interfaces exist, and drives were tiny. If you had to choose a media today, that you'd be confident would work in 25 years, what would you pick? Sure, our active code survives because we simply clone the archive every time we replace the server, but we don't have a history if every build ever. Seems like a million years ago I wrote some games. The source code is long gone. (Well it's on 5.25 floppy disks in my garage for 30 years, so functionally gone.) The compiler to make it is long gone. The OS and physical hardware is long gone (although emulators exist. ). I'm sorry to say, but making laws for old software is basically pointless.
- snvzz 9mo ago
  >Clearly the Windows NT kernel is older than 25 years, and is still making money. Not the one from 25 years ago. >Seems like a million years ago I wrote some games. The source code is long gone. (Well it's on 5.25 floppy disks in my garage for 30 years, so functionally gone.) Legal requirement would have ensured great care in preservation of said source. >I'm sorry to say, but making laws for old software is basically pointless. If it's pointless, then copyright should expire much earlier.

abetusk 9mo ago

Do you know what the single, most effective way to ensure end-of-life projects open sources the software and hardware? It's if it's *open source*. Not assurances that if they meet their funding goal they'll open source. Not a pinky promise to open source in the future. Not magnanimous decision by upper management to open source if the business fails. It's open sourcing from the outset so that people who invest in their technology can be assured they've fulfilled their promise to the community. Pay for products that produce open source software and hardware. Pay artists that put out libre/free work. Demand projects that ask for money and "will open source in the future" open source now before taking your money. In my view, finger wagging at corporate entities not open sourcing their products after end-of-life amounts to posturing.

CivBase 9mo ago
In most cases the market rewards closed source. You can't reasonably expect that to change by pressuring consumers. We need regulation here.
- abetusk 9mo ago
  I don't claim there's any easy answer. To your point, market rewards are complex and doesn't always reward closed source. I would say the markets can reward companies that add value, and companies can add value by servicing a demand at reduced costs. One cost reduction measure is to use FOSS. For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux as the underlying operating system over MS Windows. I partially agree that pressuring consumers has issues, but the consumers we're talking about in this context are programmers, software developers, electrical engineers and other technically minded folk. Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy. I'm open to regulation but it's a coarse tool that favors large corporations. In my opinion, one way to larger regulation is to start small, show value from a growing community adoption and then try to push bigger. Linux was a toy operating system until it wasn't. One minor point on regulation: From what I understand, there are some stipulations for (US) government grants to ensure FOSS artifacts get produced. I think violations of these conditions is common place. So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.

0xbadcafebee 9mo ago

One time I worked at a non-SV megacorp and they estimated the cost of open sourcing one project. It would've taken between 2 and 6 months and cost mid-six figures. Even if they wanted to pay for this when the product is about to be abandoned, they literally can't if they licensed some non-free IP.

fithisux 9mo ago
They should do it from the start.
- 0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
  Why?
  - fithisux 9mo ago
    They should design from the beginning to be as open source as possible. I work for a known customer and for their analytics stack they used in one of their departments they use some non-free libraries. From the first month I asked them to research open source libraries to have as a fallback and make the source code as friendly as possible to other contributors as if tomorrow we would open source it. The idea is that if we disappear people should take over easily. If the non-free vendor disappear or we do not have the money to spend we need a fallback. They listened to the second part, but not the first. During summer I had to build around this non-free libraries but their subscription ended when people responsible were in vacations and the project was paused because of design bugs for two months, so they did not plan to renew the license for two months. Still my part had to carry on in the mean time. I added an open source library as a fallback, even if it was 4x slower. Because of delays the license was renewed 3 months later when design issues were addressed. If they had designed around open source from the start I would have a better time. It was a real pain to replicate the functionality around the open source library. It was not a drop-in, not very far but far enough to cause hard to find bugs, in nasty calculational code. That had a number of bugs already and bad code quality. My experience.

shmerl 9mo ago

More like drivers should be open source to begin with.

skewbone 9mo ago
This would be fantastic. I'm trying to write an audio driver for my HT|Omega eClaro PCIe soundcard for Linux by leveraging kernel modules for cards with a similar BOM. It is mostly working, but the main hurdle is the inability to increase the volume to >= 50% of the volume in Windows. I'm setting attenuation correctly to the correct DAC registers and I can hear the opamp relay click on, but can't adjust the final gain. It sure would be great to have the Windows driver source. Worse yet, the company is unresponsive to my requests for any info (schematics, gain setting sequence, anything).
- userbinator 9mo ago
  Run Windows driver in a VM and pass-through your device, then dump the registers and compare.
  - skewbone 9mo ago
    Thanks, that's a great suggestion. Looks like I can also use QEMU to also trace MMIO. I appreciate the advice!

j16sdiz 9mo ago

with most of the electric are just oem stuff from china, how are you going to enforce it?

userbinator 9mo ago

but because the app is no longer in development, it's essentially useless the app used to store data for up to 5 users to keep track over time. I miss that! What? Was it storing the data on a cloud server? In that case it's a different story, but a local app should continue working essentially indefinitely. All this focus on source code is IMHO missing the point. RMS also missed this point when he started the GNU project. Source code is neither necessary nor sufficient for (legal) freedom. They just need to relinquish the copyright and release any keys and such getting in the way. Lots of examples otherwise --- I'll refer you to the cracking scene, game modding, etc. In the physical world, products can be "EOL" for decades and the aftermarket will fill in the void if there is demand, often even when the original product is still in production. The original manufacturer never released blueprints and other comparable-to-source-code information; they just don't try to stop the aftermarket. Mid-century cars are a great example of this. tl;dr: stop demanding source code, start demanding freedom.

burnt-resistor 9mo ago

Vintage hw is even harder to find drivers, BIOSs, SDKs, schematics, manuals, and such for because there's no assurance of proper archival. This is almost always seen whenever downloads were hidden behind Flash, CGI, JS, or other dynamic / link-rotten URI or were on an ftp server which IA failed to mirror. There must be international legal minimum standards of post-sales support and EOL archival caretaking to really reduce e-waste and allow things people paid for to endure rather than forced planned obsolescence like cloud-side or update-based bricking. The corrosive consumer mindset of "new, new, new"; fragile, undocumented, closed-source, short-life tech; and throwing away expensive things is absurd.

teo_zero 9mo ago

Since the article is about open-sourcing the interface and not the software itself, why only when the product goes end of life? Also, "end of life" is hard to define. Does it mean not being produced, ordered or sold? After how many days, months, etc.?

mc3301 9mo ago
I guess it depends? -Software updates no longer available -Customer support no longer exists -End of legal (or voluntary) obligations to stock replacement parts and offer repair services for the hardware

fithisux 9mo ago

Should be a law. But also sell hardware with extensive documentation and if possible conform to a standard. Moreover if the hardware is composite, that should apply to its components.

renewiltord 9mo ago

Browsed OP's website. Zero open-source content. Browsed top commenters' site. Only outlier is abetusk here who has his hobbyist stuff available openly, but nothing professional. I don't get it. Why don't any of you guys do the thing you want others to do? Be the change you want to see in the world.

PeterStuer 9mo ago

The article calls for releasing and unlocking the api to the device, not for releasing all it's code as OS as the title seemd to suggest. This is more achievable as code itself is often shared across multiple devices, some not EOL, and often not even owned by the HW producer but licensed under non FOSS compatible terms.

torginus 9mo ago

I think we are in a middle of a dark age. I was just playing around with home automation, and I have built quite a few custom devices over the past few months. Just to illustrate what I mean: I have an old furnace - it's interface is literally: pull this pin down to ground and the furnace starts up. It's incredibly easy to work with. Later furnaces from this manufacturer have some proprietary protocol that seems very difficult to interface with, from what I gathered from the internet. But, even yet more modern versions support the standardized OpenTherm protocol and is very hackable again. Something else: Hardware tends to be amortized away into a commodity. A ton of modern devices essentially run on ESP32s, raspberry Pis (or some other open SoC) or smartphone hardware with Android. I (and others have) just started hacking around with an ESP32-S3 based HMI - it's and LCD screen married to and ESP32-S3, integrated into a very nice case with a small touch screen panel. I was able to whip up a custom professional looking GUI in a couple weekends and integrate it into my (fully local, open source, HA-based) home automation system. It runs ESPHome and uses LVGL to draw the UI. I've had friends over and they remarked about how nice it looked, and asked about the brand and were suprised when I told them I hacked it together. It looks good enough that you could sell it and works very well.

developer786 9mo ago

A classic example of this is the Google Nest Learning Thermostats Version 1 and 2. With a decent bounty, these £220 ($400+) devices have been given a new lease of life by the team behind: https://nolongerevil.com/ https://nolongerevil.com/ Repurposing bricked Nest Gen 1 & 2 thermostats with custom software. Giving old hardware new life through open source innovation. No Longer Evil is a right-to-repair firmware and cloud replacement for Nest Thermostats that frees your device from Google’s cloud dependency. By flashing custom firmware, your thermostat will operate independently and connect to No Longer Evil’s platform (or your own self-hosted server), giving you complete control over your device data and settings.

bsaul 9mo ago

funny how ideas are in the air. I had the exact same idea of having EU enforce that just 2 weeks ago.

BrtByte 9mo ago

Nobody expects lifetime support, but killing basic functionality because an app backend or roadmap disappeared is hard to justify, especially when the device still works electrically and mechanically

danr4 9mo ago

it won't happen. thankfully AI + Android makes it easy to reverse engineer protocols. APKs are hilariously informative. I'm working on my own app+server for the Limitless pendant i bought before the meta acquisition. didn't write a single line of code.

kakwa_ 9mo ago

That's not enough by a long shot. There are already plenty of devices, from old phones to vacuum robots, where we have that or near enough. Technically, we know how we could maintain/re-flash these devices. Yet, we don't. Why? lack of standardization, specially the boot process in non-x86 platforms. Having to maintain per device images is not really practical at scale.