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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this product is... really clever. Especially when put on one of the "mini" USB sticks that sit nearly flush with the port.

It seems like it could potentially really enable massive reuse of older, slower laptops that might otherwise be thrown away.

It seems to me like handling driver support would be the hard part. Is that their special sauce?

I can't see this as anything but a clear win for the environment and for education. And unlike the "Google shuts down everything" meme, this seems so obviously massively helpful to their entire ChromeOS strategy it looks like it'll be here to stay.

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The problem I see is that Neverware was filling in a gap where Google has failed to provide extended support. That wasn't something Google couldn't do before... it just didn't want to.

So this acquisition likely means a return to old Chromebooks being ewaste because Google bought out the company that was providing a longer lifecycle.

When Google's team decides a computer is too old to support, do you think their other team is going to be allowed to step in and support it?

Google is likely interested in CloudReady for it's newer uses on Windows PCs, I've seen an employer ship a brand new HP laptop with CloudReady on it instead of the OEM Windows license included. But long term support is likely going to suffer.

Gotta admit I rolled my eyes hard at this bit:

“ Eventually you will initiate support requests directly with Google in the same way that you do for Chrome OS.”

(Full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried to get support for Chrome OS, but I’m fairly confident in assuming it’s right up to Google’s usual support quality standards...)

> Full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried to get support for Chrome OS

Congrats: You are lucky and have well placed confidence.

If you go through the user support it doesn't seem to go anywhere. If you then open a chromium bug like a chrome browser developer would, they will say they got no reports on the user channel and then the bug sheriff will eventually close it.

The main thing I hate about modern software development is the failure to understand one source of truth is incompatible with arbitrarily damaging information to fudge numbers. Virtually everything in their database can be correctly marked a duplicate of something they already closed, automatically, possibly without even reading it.

ah, of course, i mean after all, their mission is something like .. - im not sure if i have this right - "be evil" right?

That's not their mission, I think their mission is something like "to organize all the world's information and make it accessible and useful".

https://killedbygoogle.com/

The new embrace, extend, extinguish. :-)

Mission statements and slogans are rarely to be taken at face value...

And that's what pisses me the most. That they put out words that everyone knows have no real meaning.

That was changed in 2018. They no longer have this as part of their "code of conduct".

Why make a provably false claim?

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

"In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence."[0]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

> ... and retained in its last sentence.

That's called a punchline.

I can only imagine the discussion that occurred on moving it from the start to the end. Do leave it up there or do we admit we are evil?

You misread the comment.

Well, that’s why couching your point in a gimmick like sarcasm rarely contributes to your comment. In fact, de-gimmick your comment and I wonder if you would have considered there enough substance to post it at all.

I’m having trouble interpreting it myself (see the problem?) but I believe it would go something like “I’ve observed some irony: Google used to have the motto «don’t be evil» and what you describe sounds evil.” Feel free to correct it.

Yes, sarcasm should be completely erased from the internet.

You misread my username. I did not post that comment.

Is this sarcasm?

Neverware's original business/idea was in enabling massive reuse of older, slower computers in the education space by making them thin client devices if I remember correctly (back when it was 5 guys working out of General Assembly). Anyway congrats Jonathan and crew. It's been a long journey

I would say the "sauce" as in their willingness to support more hardware. Much of the "driver" support comes from Linux, and Linux already runs on the devices that Cloudready supports.

It the re-use of old hardware that might be thrown away it's just potential, it's happening at scale right now.

My mother used a Thinkpad T450 with Cloudready for years. To her it was a Chromebook with a larger screen than her old 11" one.

Reminds me of 15 years ago, when I used Slax in a similar way. Glad to see the project still exists: https://www.slax.org/

Aah Slax. My gateway drug into the Linux world and experimenting with computers in general. Back when I was in school looong ago when I got a copy in a tech magazine I bought from a streetside vendor.

Forgot about it at some point, I'm glad too to see it's still around! Doubt I'd be in tech or so interested in tinkering or programming or whatever if it weren't for that.

have several old laptops accumulated over the years, and they are running these days much better under the PuppyLinux purely from USB than they did back then under XP, Vista, 7.

I agree with other commenters that Neverware was bought not for old laptops. It is the supposedly zero-administration of Cloudready that in some CXX targetting PowerPoint looks like that old mainframe/terminal setup or like JavaStation (you stick the badge in and your work environment comes up) - CXX like to cut costs through magic of zero-administration/etc. May be Google will even risk to roll it out internally.

Mostly they are just among very few to support generic Chromium OS builds

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