alt Hacker NewsIt 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.
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> It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB.
I'm not even sure if the motivation is as positive as that - the video, blog, and dev docs read more like a sales pitch for meta's AI tools...
(I'm glad they did it, the portal is great hardware; but I don't expect that this will be a pattern of opening up old hardware unless it provides tangible benefits to the AI department)
> It is sad that it takes a Meta developer having some fun to realize they should open up ADB.
Former facebook research lab twat here. It wasn't one dev.
We asked when they shitcanned portal (which was a great product, badly managed) to open it up. Infact one of the kernel devs made a very direct plea to allow the community to adopt the hardware so that we could avoid Ewaste.
It was denied because there are keys on the device that would leak if meta opened it up. (I'm not an android dev so I don't know the ins and outs of that)
However, portal was a casualty of the dash to VR. They scaled up the team briefly, which meant that lots of weird stuff was tried, but the roadmap was diluted. The idea was that they portal would be the "portal" to horizon worlds. this meant that they pushed back the plan for thirdparty app stores that would have meant you had something to actually do on the device.
neglect and stupidity from zuck meant that the portal was killed, even though the next gen device was actually a really great media device (wireless, removable charging stand, excellent speakers, but nothing to run on it.)