This isn’t a case of companies meeting consumer needs, though.
I wonder what would ending up happening is that, instead of providing security patches (which would require resources), companies would just send out a “bricking” command. Which of those would be worse for the company? Bad press over security vulnerabilities, or bricking?
That’s precisely what Revolv did (as discussed in show 1x65) and they got plenty of bad publicity for it. On the other hand, bad publicity is better than customers getting their data owned, although the company might not see it that way.
1 Like
I was confused over the point of ioT toasters but now understand them to be sentient, have feelings and even demand to be re-homed if not treated properly. They need to be internet connected so they can talk to their toaster friends 
. More details are available here on the ‘Addicted Toasters’ web site.
1 Like
I think it was mentioned on the show that you have to assume that anyone buying such a “toaster from Canonical” 
would have no idea as to security on their end. What if the software that the vender supplies runs as a layer over an industry standardized operating system that updates are controlled by entity that produced the OS?
@57:20 “security is a boolean” are Bryan’s exact words
I think this should be a bigger concern for individuals: Arctic Circle | Comics | ArcaMax Publishing
Hi Bryan,
Come and register for this webinar next week (and anyone else reading this too), it will help explain how Ubuntu Core addresses this specific issue 
1 Like
Thank-you for posting that @flexiondotorg - think we were all getting a_bit FRAZZLED there for a while 
Sorry for using SaaS, but is this the talk you were muting ? 'cos there was a tweet ¼ of a day ago about this .
Anyway, hope things get more ambient in the conversation - the link was welcomed. +1
Does “Ubuntu Core” completely change Canonical’s approach to their product life-cycle? Because… if not… it’s pretty irrelevant.
As far as I know, only Samsung is making wild profits from Android phones - or at least they were until the Galaxy Note 7. HTC, ZTE, Huawei, Sony, LG, Motorola, OnePlus, and so forth have been struggling.
I suspect that the real reason Google priced the Pixel phones so high is to protect the rest of the Android smart phone market. Their big fear is probably that all of the smaller Android manufacturers drop out one at a time until Google has less power over Android than Samsung because Samsung makes all of the hardware.
On the subject of IOT lifecycles and insecurity. One big thing I think everybody is missing here is that IOT is quite obviously a new method manufacturers have found of deploying planned obsolescence into their products. It’s never going to be a problem that a 25 year old IOT Oven is insecure, because IOT is manna from heaven for the domestic white goods manufacturers, who have found a wonderful new way to make us want to replace all our stuff every 3-5 years instead of 10 to 25.
Yep. 100% agreed. And we, as people, should fight that.
2 Likes
Another reason to avoid the Pixel. I guess this goes back to the previous discussion about allowing your data to be controlled by corporate overlords. If you do something they do not like, they can wipe you clean.
Yeah, although that’s not actually particularly to do with the Pixel phone itself. Google can lock you out of your Google account for whatever reason they like and all you can do is beg to be let back in. In this particular case the thing that people did to annoy Google was selling their Pixel phone immediately while having promised not to (perhaps unknowingly), but G could have locked them out for any one of a dozen other reasons too.
Of course, this needs to be counterbalanced with the amount of work and difficulty it is to provide all this stuff for oneself, and therefore everyone will make different tradeoffs. Some will consider the risk that a corporate overlord will lock them out to be too worrying no matter now minuscule or the price required to avoid it; some will consider the risk vanishing and the convenience great. Che sera, sera.
