mcc
"With a software death date baked into each model, older versions of these inexpensive computers are set to expire three to six years after their release. Despite having fully functioning hardware, an expired Chromebook will no longer receive the software updates it needs, blocking basic websites and applications from use…
[Pictured] A pile of Chromebooks with expired software sit in a classroom at Montera Middle School in Oakland, Calif"
Future Sprog
@mcc
This is starting to bite at the local library where I teach Code Club (Scratch for kids).
Most of the Chromebooks were purchased about 3 years ago and they’re showing “final update” alerts. Now websites are no longer validating because the Let’s Encrypt certificates are signed by an expired root and they don’t have the new root.
Perfectly serviceable laptops but Google just needed to kill something and so they killed working Chromebooks.
Glyph
@mhoye @mcc while searching the web for examples of RAT attacks on kids by way of example of the severity of the risk here, all I can find is lawsuits and enforcement actions against *school districts* violating students’ 4th amendment rights by secretly recording their webcams and screens with “legitimate” MDM access, so, just, fuck all of this, maybe the conclusion I should actually come to is that schools should not be allowed to have computers, just give kids cash to buy their own devices
Glyph
@mhoye @mcc it’s irresponsible to allow children’s information to be stored on network-connected devices that are years out of date on security patches. while one could argue that we should mandate longer lifespans, that the software should be maintained for 10 years instead of 3, the idea that we should allow arbitrarily decrepit computing devices to be used indefinitely is intuitive but also dangerous.
mhoye
@mcc this should be illegal.
moralrecordings
@mcc real frustrating to hear people miss the main point. In the context of a school district, they've bought into GSuite, they need hardware that can be MDMed through GSuite, Google decided they're fine with forcing them to buy new hardware. Nothing about the hardware has changed enough to warrant this, they just want the money. Being flashable to open firmware is insurance against regulation; school districts can't do it because there's no MDM and the whole point is MDM!
clacke
clacke
Rose, The Sword Vixen
@mcc Couldn't they wipe and install Ubuntu?
moralrecordings
@clacke @mcc Mobile Device Management. Basically the suite of technologies which let an organisation e.g. assign each device to a user account, provision software to the whole fleet, etc. Chromebooks are popular for organisations which pay for GSuite, as the integration is strong.
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