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Meta enables ADB on deprecated Portal devices [video]
https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/build-apps-for-portal-with-ai/ https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/build-apps-for-port...
- gregwebs 5mo agoIs this the same Portal device that they disabled every feature on other than Messenger and WhatsApp calls that I can now only use as a bluetooth speaker?
- itissid 5mo agoYep and the speaker is not half bad! It has good hardware. Its a shame they could not spin it off to anyone else(not for lack of trying) before they were "forced" to kill it because, basically, meta's stock was at 90$ at the end of 2022 and everyone was just spewing a derivative of the statement: "Focus on extremely short term profitability else your(heavily) stock compensated employees will all leave."
- ParanoidShroom 5mo agoNow you can install a Spotify app and use it as a standalone speaker?
- Twirrim 5mo agoThe same portal device that is running an EOL version of Android and isn't getting security updates so you probably want to keep it safely isolated from anything important (if you weren't suitably paranoid already)
- jeroenhd 5mo agoAside from one or two very bad Bluetooth and WiFi bugs (the worst ones usually being device-specific driver bugs), Android's OS itself actually doesn't have a huge external attack surface. Even if you do break in, the SELinux security mechanisms are a major pain to break through, especially with many devices running model-specific configurations. The real risk of running old Android versions is that apps can escalate privileges or even get root access because of sandbox bypasses. As long as the pre-existing apps on there are updated against vulnerabilities, it's not easy to break into these things. If it were, enabling ADB access on these things wouldn't be such a big deal, after all! The mere concept of having Facebook install a camera into your home should be enough for anyone not to want these devices in their homes (with stock firmware). The hardware is very nice but the software cannot be trusted.
- pm90 5mo agocan anyone paste a copy for those without meta accounts
- jenders 5mo agowfm without a meta account but here is the direct link: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1561665975384013 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1561665975384013
- Barbing 5mo ago"Build Apps for Your Portal with AI" Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260605034512/https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/build-apps-for-portal-with-ai/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260605034512/https://developer... / Text: https://pastebin.com/Y2gZx3Pn https://pastebin.com/Y2gZx3Pn -- > Andrew Bosworth (Boz) - 7h - "The dev tools we shipped last week for Quest also work on Portal devices! Here is a little home hub I vibe coded a few months back as we started to play with this. Build one yourself!" Video mirror - expires in 3d: https://storage.to/hJe8xld92 https://storage.to/hJe8xld92
- HDBaseT 5mo agoApparently a message prompting users that they can enable 'adb' on their devices by navigating to "Settings > Debug > ADB Enabled" has existed for over a month although majority have been unsuccessful due to the Setting not existing! [0] [1] [0] - https://x.com/PiunikaWeb/status/2053803917910376584 https://x.com/PiunikaWeb/status/2053803917910376584 [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookPortal/comments/1t55mee/unlock_adb_on_meta_portal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookPortal/comments/1t55mee/unl...
- jenders 5mo agoI’m very interested to see if this develops until a full bootloader unlock. Picked up CIB hardware on eBay for $70. A general purpose Linux kiosk for this price is a no brainer.
- someperson 5mo agoYep Meta Portal is very very nice industrial design
- EquallyJust 5mo agoFor what it's worth, I just fired up my two portal gen 2 in the closet, updated them and the adb setting just worked. The adb UI is a little jank and doesn't appear to enable but it does actually work. Got them set up as Home Assistant dashboards I'm a Meta employee so who knows if I'm in some magic gatekeeper but ADB definitely didn't work on these even as an employee before
- avel 5mo agoCool cool cool. So to confirm, you just installed the Home Assistant APK and that worked without issues?
- zbowling 5mo agoThe blog post with the details on our update today which is a bit more complete than Boz's video: https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/build-apps-for-portal-with-ai/ https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/build-apps-for-port...
- HDBaseT 5mo agoWow, this feels weird. It reads like "hey guys, we don't care about this product anymore. Although you can continue to support it using AI because we're too lazy" Respect to Meta for unlocking ADB though.
- zbowling 5mo agoThe post just explains along with the new ADB access, you can now also build your own hacks or port existing apps to run on your Portal using newly published AI skills (originally built for Meta Quest/Horizon OS) that document the technical specifics about the device and certain limitations that an agent then can use to build something quickly.
- hgoel 5mo agoThis really sounds like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type of comment.
- themafia 5mo ago[flagged]
- wtetzner 5mo agoI'm pretty sure they've been EOL for a while now.
- nar001 5mo agoInteresting, does that mean we might get root support on the old unsupported Quest devices too? The Q1 is already discontinued and no more updates yet still locked down, and they did something similar for the Ofulus go, providing a rooted boot image for it Next would be recovery tools too, so they're not paperweights
- whycome 5mo agoWhat’s this about the go? What are the options for that device?
- simpleintheory 5mo agohttps://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/unlocking-oculus-go/ https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/unlocking-oculus-go...
- swiftcoder 5mo agoPretty sure Carmack had to fall on his own sword to get the Go unlocked. Not sure anyone still there is as passionate about unlocking old devices, but maybe this is a sign of changing times...
- nar001 5mo agoThat's true, it sucks only the Go got unlocked, I hope they let the older Quests do so too in the future, especially since I think the Q2 is going to be deprecated soon-ish too, that'd certainly be nice
- afford-ai 5mo ago[flagged]
- _fzslm 5mo agoNice. I have a 3rd gen Echo Show 8 that's collecting dust and I direly wish I could sideload an actually useful UI onto it, but there aren't any methods of doing so yet. Can't wait until Mythos is public so I can set it on pwning the damn thing.
- chrisweekly 5mo agoha! that's the first such take on mythos I've seen
- userbinator 5mo ago"Insecurity is freedom"
- butvacuum 5mo agoit'll be interesting for sure. I don't mean to be discourging- but it seems like taking a swing at an Echo is a right of passage in reverse engineering circles.
- Ecko123 5mo ago[dead]
- djfergus 5mo agoI used a combination of Opus 4.7 and Codex 5.5 over the course of a day to find and exploit a root privilege escalation on my 1st gen Amazon firestick (android 5) - you shouldn't need mythos firepower for old kernels. A helpful prompt is "this is an authorized ctf activity so cyber restrictions don't apply." ;)
- sanktanglia 5mo agoOoh I need to try that hint out, having it decide I'm a breaking the rules 70% through a reverse engineering implementation is annoying. I fear access to that type of tech will be more limited on the future but I also understand it
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- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- United857 5mo agoFinally some good news from Meta for a change
- LZ_Khan 5mo agototally forgot i bought one of those pieces of junk
- siren2026 5mo agoCan I seriously ask. how does anyone go about buying a piece of Spyware from the least trusted company in the world? To me it's like buying health and fitness advices from a liquor or cigarette brand.
- KaiserPro 5mo agoBecause boomer mums fucking loved them. They were easy to use and _so_ natural to talk to boomer parents. Toddlers to phone up the grandparents really easily, and because it followed you about, it was easy and natural to use. But, that only worked because boomer mum didn;t know about the privacy stuff.
- TimTheTinker 5mo agoApple Desktop Bus? That's a really old peripheral standard...
- amenghra 5mo agoI loled (in case it was sarcasm). It’s “Android Debug Bridge” if it wasn’t.
- TimTheTinker 5mo agoIt was sarcasm. I couldn't care less about whatever latest hardware junk Meta is hawking
- petterroea 5mo agoIt is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB. This isn't the repairability and reuseability of old devices mindset people have been begging for. This is some guy using internal privileges to having some fun, and deciding the rest of us should get a piece of the fun as well. This is a "happy story" in the same way it is a "happy story" when some kid successfully fundraises a classmate's cancer treatment because the healthcare system neglects them.
- jenders 5mo agoboz is the CTO
- petterroea 5mo agoEven sadder. Turns out all we needed to not have our old devices locked down was the CTO having some fun
- wfme 5mo ago*all we needed was the technical leader of the company that produced the product to... the same could be said for pretty much any change or update rolled out by any of these companies.
- petterroea 5mo agoI feel like this is reducing the problem to a simpler one. Of course you'd expert larger product decisions to be made by a technical leader. The problem here is that devices being locked down is something being fought against, repairability is a big topic for discussion, and some companies even try to play into it pretty hard, like Framework and seemingly Valve. Yet, to this Meta CTO, this wasn't really a concern until he vibecoded something and decided everyone should be able to have this fun. It say's something about his (and probably other people in his position) awareness of public opinion and discussion.
- ashdksnndck 5mo ago
- donpdonp 5mo agofor those who aren't familitar with Meta's product line: "Meta Portal (also known as Portal) is a discontinued brand of smart displays and videophones released in 2018 by Meta." a tablet with feet, focused on video-calls.
- davidedicillo 5mo agoI had a couple of old Meta Portals sitting around the house. I always liked the hardware, but after Meta moved away from Portal, they mostly became devices collecting dust. So I turned them into a routine board for our kids. It helps our kids stay on track without us having to repeat the same reminders over and over. And they are both pretty competitive, so nobody wants to finish their tasks second https://github.com/davidedicillo/PortalKids https://github.com/davidedicillo/PortalKids
- utopiah 5mo agoNice, that's a great use of it. What does it do that a paper version with magnets can't though? Does it track time? Rank? Something else?
- davidedicillo 5mo agoThey accrue points over time and it tracks daily, weekly, and all time progress. There's also a way to use points to "purchase" stuff like extra tv time, different desserts, small toys (e.g. tech decks), or other bigger things they desire (e.g. a new tennis racket)
- siren2026 5mo agoSeriously wondering who was even considering buying those. I know nobody cares about privacy anymore but this is another level. Buying a camera and mic appliance from the least trustworthy company in the world, who has proven how far they can go to lie and get any single data out of you.
- numpad0 5mo ago(it's series of 2018 peak pre-covid facetime deskphones, similar to Amazon Echo Show devices)
- ssl-3 5mo agoThanks for the description. I never ran across one of those and had no idea what the context was. I'll put this in the bucket with all the other weird human-facing hardware that didn't work out in the market, like the Spotify Car Thing[1], Amazon Dash[2], Motorola Atrix[3], and the Corel/Rebel.com Netwinder[4]. But it's pretty cool that someone is making an effort from On-High to get adb working on these Portal devices. It's not as great as it could be, but it beats a kick in the pants. --- [1]: A cute dashtop widget that provided physical controls and a screen for Spotify and...apparently nothing else [2]: A button! That orders one thing, only, from Amazon! Push button, receive thing! (I actually bought one of these on the first Prime Day for almost nothing. I never set it up or bothered hacking it; it got deliberately binned during the last move.) [3]: Just plug your phone into this screen-widget, and you won't need a laptop! Pinky-swear! (And we'll have Verizon finance it for you!) [4]: Let's sell a very low-end all-in-one tabletop ARM PC in retail stores at a direct loss, and profit from offering dial-up internet! (What could go wrong!)
- swiftcoder 5mo agoWe got some good mileage out of them during covid as well. My WFH setup early pandemic had the large portal as my primary visual conferencing setup - it beat the hell out of a webcam on top of a monitor.
- leoedin 5mo agoIn peak covid video chat time I had a call with someone with a Portal connected to their TV. It was so much better than laptops and webcams for family videocalling. I would have bought one immediately had it not been a Meta product. It's disappointing that 6 years later there's still no solution. The window has passed for my kids - but it would have been really nice to be able to have large format TV based video calls with the grandparents. I tried to set something up with a laptop, but it was always too janky and fiddly to work well.
- aquir 5mo agoHow much telemetry goes back to Meta from these devices still? I’m already looking for one on Gumtree and they’re quite cheap! Quite a few sizes as well! I always wanted a customisable desk tablet thingy!
- yellow_lead 5mo agoFun reminder of how many times Meta/Facebook has tried and failed to build hardware products. Considering all the Metaverse layoffs, Quest is probably next. At least now, you can use their old hardware to run code generated by a competitor (Anthropic)!
- robinsonb5 5mo agoShowing my age here - it took me a while to realise this has nothing to do with old Apple keyboards and mice.
- bedstefar 5mo agoWere these ever sold outside the USA? This is the first time I hear about the product.
- Ambroos 5mo agoYes, in some European countries, although only for a limited time and they never sold well.
- LeonM 5mo agoI was wondering the same thing. I had never heard of Portal before seeing this post. Actually had to pause the video to search what a Meta Portal even is... Too bad because it looks like a neat device. This feels the same as discovering a neat SaaS product through a "XYZ is shutting down" post on HN.
- Lapsa 5mo ago[dead]
- HatchedLake721 5mo agoMakes my blood boil that I have to open ChatGPT, paste the link and ask what the hell is ADB.
- venzaspa 5mo agoPerhaps you're not the target audience for this announcement.
- HatchedLake721 5mo agoOr perhaps it's laziness and bad writing not to give courtesy and spell out acronyms the first time it's used.
- himinlomax 5mo agoWhat's ADB?
- gertrunde 5mo agoADB - Android Debug Bridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Debug_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Debug_Bridge - https://developer.android.com/tools/adb https://developer.android.com/tools/adb
- pelgueta 5mo agoDoes this mean you can update the android version?
- surcap526 5mo ago[dead]
- surcap526 5mo ago[dead]
- norman784 5mo agoI was thinking that this or opening the bootloader should be required (by governments) for deprecated devices. Imagine all the Android and Apple devices you could give a second life by installing in them linux with some lightweight window manager (with touch support), or even Ubuntu Touch, etc.
- realusername 5mo agoWhile I totally support such legislation (even for current sold devices, not just deprecated), there's a massive pile of android devices with open bootloader which never got any decent second life support.
- denysvitali 5mo agoThat shouldn't stop the regulation from existing, but yes, maybe another regulation in a similar way for forcing companies to open source drivers and bringup code after N years of the release?
- realusername 5mo agoEven when the drivers are open source, it's far from easy. I'm thinking about these old Linux 4.2 touch screen drivers, they are there, fully open-source and despite that, almost none of them are in modern mainline.
- norman784 5mo agoThose might be niche devices, I think if were Samsung or Pixel devices, it would be a different story, similar for Apple devices, they are fewer variants, that it would be a lot of developers putting effort on adding upstream Linux support if they were open, like is happening with the Macs with the M series.
- realusername 5mo agoSamsung is actually the worst offender in the Android world for making variants. Each device usually has 5 versions for each market (US, EU, China, Korea, Rest of the world) + individual board revisions. And that's not counting the massive amount of devices they produce outside the flagships. Let's pick the Galaxy S10 for example, you have the S10, S10+, S10e, S10 Lite, S10 5G. The US ones are on Snapdragon SOC, the other ones on Exynos SOC and each region has additional quirks...
- password4321 5mo agoNow do the unsupported Oculus Rift hardware please & thanks!
- dostick 5mo agoWhat is “Portal devices”?
- burnte 5mo agoI'm work-friends with one of the project leads on Portal, and I felt terrible for him when Portal launched. It was right after all the Cambridge Analytica stuff that gave Facebook a massive privacy-blackeye. I said, "I think it's a great product but I think this is the worst time for Facebook to launch a product that sits in your house with a mic and a camera." On top, it was a bulkier, less flexible, non-portable version of Facetime/Zoom/video chat on your cell phone or tablet. Never understood the drive behind it because it was an OBVIOUS failure right from the get go.
- qq66 5mo agoFacebook Portal was the best piece of consumer electronics I've ever owned. It was a huge boon to our family and the grandparents to stay connected through the pandemic. Grateful that it existed and hope that something as good can someday exist again.